KSPI chairman Said Iqbal said the government had let Chinese investors bring thousands of unskilled workers to the nation, but had not shown the same flexibility to other foreign investors who had long been running businesses in Indonesia.

“We want the government to prevent Chinese investors from taking unskilled workers and protect the existing upstream industry in Indonesia,” Iqbal said on Monday as quoted by Tempo.co.

With the recent layoffs at a number of foreign companies in Indonesia, including Japan’s electronic manufacturer PT Toshiba, Iqbal said the reason was not the high demand for increased wages from workers, but was instead due to the weakening of people’s purchasing power that created implications for the drastic slump of electronic product sales.